Jiangshan Fengwuzhi

Chapter 14 Alchemist (Thanks to the leader of "Sanwuxuanqi")

"Just bear with it."

Pei Nian used a dagger to cut open Gu Jingnian's clothes and cut off the arrow shaft that pierced his chest. The black arrowhead fell to the ground, and it was obviously also poisoned.

She pulled it out swiftly and reached for the hemostatic medicine, but then she stopped when she remembered that Gu Jingnian had a special physique.

Looking over, I saw Gu Jingnian gritting his teeth and frowning.

"So you also feel pain." Pei Nian said.

"This time it hurts more than usual."

Pei Nian looked at him and felt that his wounds were recovering much slower than last time.

On the other side of the woods, Huang Hu and You Gui were digging a pit to bury the bodies of Qi Laowu and Yu San.

"More and more people know your secret." Pei Nian threw a brocade robe of the Kaiping Division to Gu Jingnian, "I can make them shut up, but if those two men in black see that you are not dead, they will definitely become suspicious."

Gu Jingnian looked at Master Ma who was tied under a tree and said, "I want to find my mother clan and leave Zhongzhou."

"Why?"

"I am not of your race, so my heart must be different."

"Okay, I said I would look up Fengwuzhi for you, and that's what I said."

"Ah."

Gu Jingnian looked much more heroic in his brocade robe.

Pei Nian saw this and asked, "You come from a family of generals, and you have an extraordinary physique. If you inherit your family's martial arts, you will surely become a great general. But I see that your martial arts... have you ever studied them seriously?"

"How can a monster be a general?"

Gu Jingnian spoke with disdain, but his answer was very natural. That was a bloody lesson his father had taught him time and again.

But didn't he want to learn martial arts? It was because he secretly watched Gu Jiye practicing martial arts that he was severely punished by Madam Zong, so Gu Caiwei tried every means to send him to Chongjing Academy.

Pei Nian said: "In fact, there are many strange people in the army..."

"Yes, they are all hounds driven by you."

"You are too extreme." Pei Nian said.

Gu Jingnian's eyes fell on her sword and said, "You know I'm a monster, so the first thing you think of is not to chop off my head?"

Pei Nian was stunned and asked, "How can someone like you be so cautious?"

Gu Jingnian was too lazy to talk to her about this anymore, and said, "If the three men in black had shot Master Ma at the beginning, they would have killed him long ago. Even if they rushed over, they didn't attack Master Ma."

"Yes." Pei Nian said: "They should be following him. As for the purpose, what are they looking for?"

"As soon as we caught Master Ma, they attacked us, regardless of being outnumbered. This shows how important this matter is. Seeing that they were outnumbered, they fled. I'm afraid they will report it and bring more people."

Gu Jingnian thought about these and became worried about Lu Yanning's safety.

As he spoke, he walked up to Master Ma and asked a question very frankly.

"Doctor Ma, since you have read Fengwuzhi, do you know what kind of anomaly I am?"

Master Ma had small eyes and a sharp gaze. He stared at Gu Jingnian for a while and then shrank his neck.

"That book has ten volumes, and I have only read one. I really don't know your origins."

Gu Jingnian was a little disappointed, but since Master Ma knew many strange stories about the Yihai after reading only one volume, he could still place hope on Zhaowenguan.

Pei Nian grabbed his collar and said, "It will be troublesome if I keep you here. If you dare to hide anything again, I will kill you!"

"How dare I hide anything? I'll tell you everything I know."

"Let me ask you, how did you capture that prisoner?"

"Before, I heard that a monster appeared near the valley of Qianqiu Ridge, so I came to investigate. At the Wanchun Palace over there, I saw someone escorting the prisoner away, so I quietly followed them and robbed the medicine store. Later, it was lost, so I had to come back to look for monsters in the valley..."

Pei Nian was stunned for a moment, then he remembered that Wanchun Palace was not too far from here.

It was a summer palace built for Emperor Da Rui. It was proposed and supervised by Chao Ju, the Vice Minister of Works. It had been under construction for several years but had never been completed.

The three hundred prisoners of war sent by Gu Beiming were once escorted to Wanchun Palace for labor. During the Xixiao Rebellion, perhaps a few of them were still left in Wanchun Palace and were escorted out afterwards.

If so, the leeches might have been planted in Wanchun Palace, or even someone originally wanted to assassinate the emperor in the palace, but changed his mind because of the captives presented in the western suburbs.

Gu Jingnian remembered the map that Lu Yanning took out from his arms, which was the terrain around Wanchun Palace.

After the captives were presented in the western suburbs, the emperor was going to visit Wanchun Palace. The reason why Lu Yanning brought it with him was to arrange defense in front of the emperor.

It seems that Lu Yanning has not returned yet, and he may have gone to Wanchun Palace. Therefore, the commander in front of the emperor knew his whereabouts and did not ask him why he was not on duty.

"There is something wrong with Wanchun Palace."

Gu Jingnian and Pei Nian said almost in unison.

The two looked at each other, and Gu Jingnian thought that if Pei Nian planned to take Master Ma back to Jing to report and mobilize more manpower, he really couldn't trust him, so they had no choice but to part ways.

Pei Nian said without hesitation: "Let's go to Wanchun Palace."

This case is of great importance, and those involved are all important officials of the court. Even Lu Yanning has gone away and will never return. If more manpower is really transferred, the news may leak out.

The four men took the tied-up Master Ma and mounted their horses to set off. Now two of them had died before they could even accomplish their mission. Looking at the empty saddle, one could not help but feel that life and death were unpredictable.

On the way, Gu Jingnian asked Master Ma, "You have been wandering here recently. Have you seen anyone else?"

"I did see a few imperial guards two days ago. I thought they were here to arrest me, so I hid. But they didn't stay for long. After watching for a while, they rode off to Wanchun Palace."

That must be Lu Yanning and his group, Gu Jingnian thought, perhaps Lu Yanning had already determined that the problem was in Wanchun Palace when he looked at the map that day.

Pei Nian asked: "Can leeches be kept as pets?"

"You can raise them, but you can't tame them."

Master Ma seemed to have an irrepressible expectation of going to Wanchun Palace, and he took the initiative to answer questions. "The leech is cold-blooded and cannot be tamed. It spits out saliva to form eggs, so it is very easy to reproduce. But it is bloodthirsty and flesh-loving. If you want to raise it into a nine-headed leech, I don't know how many human hearts it will have to devour."

"Nine heads?" Huang Hu asked, "Can it grow to nine heads?"

"Yes, but it's extremely difficult. Don't think it's easy for it to have three heads. That's for the tough guys living in the Bear and Tiger Camp. Ordinary people only have one or two heads."

Pei Nian and You Gui both knew that this was indeed the case, as the ones they saw later did not have three heads.

Master Ma sighed and said, "The five-headed viper on the western suburbs training ground was still that big after being burned to death. The six-headed viper must be several times bigger... But I heard that the six-headed viper can leave the human body, and after eating flesh and blood for a few more years, it can become a seven-headed viper."

Huang Hu said: "If you want to use leeches as medicine, Kaipingsi has leech corpses."

"You don't understand this."

When it comes to making medicine, Master Ma is so knowledgeable that he forgets everything else and says, "This thing is extremely poisonous, but its heart is not poisonous. The five-headed viper lives on humans and has no heart. Only the six-headed viper can grow a heart after it is reborn."

Huang Hu asked again: "Since it is not poisonous, what will happen if you eat it?"

"No one has seen it, let alone eaten it, so how can I know?"

As Master Ma said this, there was a hint of longing in his eyes.

Then, his eyes glanced at Gu Jingnian casually.

Pei Nian asked, "You brought back a leech, aren't you afraid of death?"

Master Ma said, "I have made a medicine that may be able to paralyze it."

When Gu Jingnian heard this, he immediately thought of the black jars and the people selling blood in Renxin Pharmacy.

Using blood as a medicine may be like adding sugar to bitter medicine for leeches.

"Where did you learn all this?"

"There is a note in Fengwuzhi that 'male vipers are poisonous, but their hearts are good medicine'. Male vipers are like this, and using leeches to feed vipers may not be useless as medicine."

"Using leeches to feed snakes?"

This was the first time Pei Nian heard this statement, and he couldn't help but ponder.

Gu Jingnian said: "These are not recorded on the paper found in your room."

"If you study Fengwuzhi in detail, you will find many methods of making medicine. That's why the imperial court included it in the book and strictly prohibited private collection of the book. All you can find are some minor details. I found the useful ones elsewhere."

"Where did you see it?" Gu Jingnian asked.

Master Ma looked embarrassed and stammered, "That Imperial Physician Liu has become a traitor, but I have nothing to do with him. I just wanted to steal medicine from his house."

Pei Nian frowned at this sentence.

It was she who handled the case of treason. The imperial physician Liu Heng wanted to poison the emperor because he had committed adultery with a concubine in the harem. The evidence was conclusive and she was confident that she had done nothing wrong.

The medicine that Liu Heng personally prepared and presented over the past two months was actually a highly poisonous drug, and he indeed committed suicide out of fear of punishment on the day he was arrested.

Now it seems that Liu Heng took the "Fengwuzhi" from Zhaowenguan to study in order to poison the emperor...

Gradually, a winding mountain road appeared among the mountains of Qianqiuling, and to the southwest was Wanchun Palace.

Pei Nian was about to drive the horse forward, but Gu Jingnian pulled her reins and said, "Just like this?"

"Why? Are you afraid too?"

"You Kaiping Division are used to being arrogant when handling cases." Gu Jingnian said, "We will go in disguise as laborers."

Pei Nian understood what he meant. The person behind this case must be a high-ranking official, not to mention that they had already revealed their whereabouts.

"But if you don't reveal your identity, how can you enter Wanchun Palace?"

Gu Jingnian said: "Wanchun Palace has not been completed. I have carefully read my brother-in-law's defense map and I know where the loopholes are."

Pei Nian nodded and led the team in the opposite direction of Wanchun Palace, hoping to find a village and change into ordinary people's clothes.

After walking for several miles, we saw a small path in the valley. It should lead to a village, but the road was overgrown with grass and trees, as if no one had walked on it for a long time.

Walking along the path, I finally saw the collapsed house. There was a collapsed stone carving on the side of the road. When I got closer, I could see three mottled words among the spider webs. They were "Fengning Town".

"There's actually a town here?" Huang Hu asked, "It looks quite big, why is it deserted?"

You Gui was very experienced and knew a lot. He said, "When Wanchun Palace was built, land was confiscated to build roads. The people were relocated to the fertile land of Erqu in the Xihe River and were given houses and fields."

"No wonder the wood and stones have been taken away."

The town was deserted, with only adobe walls left, overgrown with weeds.

The five men walked past on horseback, hoping to see if they could find some rags of clothing that could be used to disguise themselves.

Huang Hu suddenly bent down, picked up a rattle, and wanted to spin it to play with it, but found that the drum surface was cracked.

"It seems that they can't find it, so there are only rags left, which must be rotten, rotten to the core."

They passed through the town and behind them were nothing but woods and ponds.

There was little rain this year and it was late autumn, so only withered aquatic plants were left by the pond.

Yougui wanted to feed the horse, so he led the horse closer. Seeing that the pond had dried up, he was about to stop when he suddenly paused.

"Investigation."

Pei Nian and Gu Jingnian stepped forward to take a look, and both of them widened their pupils and stood there in a daze.

There was still silt in the center of the pond, with a few clumps of lush water plants left behind. But underneath those wilted water plants, something that had been buried for a long time was revealed.

In the sunlight, there are patches of terrifying white among the black mud.

Those were bones, piled one on top of another, so densely packed that no one knew how many there were...

(End of this chapter)